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The Calgary Centre byelection saw yet another Conservative elected to join the ranks of Stephen Harper’s government. But unlike the seven other Calgary Conservative MPs, Joan Crockatt fell far short of a majority.

So now there is even more chatter among local opposition activists about how so-called progressive voters could form an alliance in order to elect someone other than a Conservative.

Taken as just a matter of numbers it all seems quite possible. After all, 63 per cent of the people who turned out to vote voted against Crockatt, one of Harper’s most adoring devotees.

But as the fallout from the byelection proves, it’s about a lot more than numbers. There’s party pride to take into account.

Many of the local Liberals are blaming the Greens for splitting the opposition vote and ensuring a Conservative win. Harvey Locke, the Liberal candidate, built much of his campaign around that theme. And it was close: the Liberals placed second to Crockatt with 33 per cent of the vote compared to her 37 per cent.

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Greens, on the other hand, are elated that they grabbed 26 per cent of the vote and attracted people who are usually loathe to participate in election campaigns.

The NDP sank almost out of sight, garnering only 4 per cent of the vote, which was strange given that during the summer it was the NDP which pushed hardest the idea of one progressive candidate who could draw support from all opposition parties.

None of this is encouraging for those who want to stop fracturing the anti-Conservative vote.

This being Calgary though, opposition activists can’t help but look to the success of the alliance between the Reform party and the Progressive Conservatives that morphed into the Conservative Party of Canada and looks set to win many more elections if the opposition doesn’t get its act together.

But the situation today for the anti-Conservative forces is quite different from what Reform and the PCs were dealing with. In the late 1990s, the Reform party had a strong base of support in Western Canada and won enough seats to become the official opposition. The PCs, on the other hand, had been almost wiped out. And let’s not forget that most Reform activists had been PCs at one time. The new conservative party simply swallowed the old.

No such thing is happening among the current progressive forces. At this point, the New Democrats, Liberals and Greens are all much weaker than Reform was when it began uniting conservatives, particularly in the West. The NDP has only 16 seats, the Liberals 4 and the Greens 1, out of a total of 92 in the region.

Locke, the Calgary Centre Liberal candidate, told me during a pre-election interview that if he were successful it would be an important step toward establishing a western base for the Liberals. He wasn’t successful so now Alberta Liberals will have to depend on elected Liberals from elsewhere to rouse local partisans.

Yet most Liberals here still see other parties joining them rather than the other way around.

As for the Greens, they are enjoying a surge of support, particularly in B.C., where they came close to winning the byelection in Victoria. Combining forces with one of the old-line parties — the NDP or the Liberals — would render them invisible. Besides, many of their supporters like them because they are new, because they don’t do politics as usual.

The NDP is certainly not going to slide into the shadows. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair made that quite clear during the Calgary byelection.

“We are the official opposition . . . and we have a message to deliver,” Mulcair said during a media scrum, sounding insulted by the very idea that the official opposition would back away from a byelection.

If the party brass can’t even put aside rivalries for a byelection, what hope is there for a united strategy during a general election?

Green Leader Elizabeth May has said she is willing to look at co-operation among parties. Janet Keeping, leader of the Alberta Greens also backs that concept, although she said various forms need to be explored first. Liberal leadership contender Joyce Murray also wants to explore co-operation.

Leadership is important but it may not be party brass and power-brokers who usher in co-operation. If it happens, it is much more likely to occur at the local level when frustrated political activists and volunteers devise new strategies for coming together to defeat Conservatives.

To that end, a meeting has already been planned for this week in Calgary. The anti-Conservative faction may have lost the byelection but they haven’t given up hope.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

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